Benjamin Adams has been learning from Benjamin Anderson for two years, but he’s also been chasing his Mountain Vista teammate, too.
He finally caught him in the Class 5A final of the 3,200-meter run Friday morning at JeffCo Stadium, their last race in the event together.
“It’s the reason I’m where I am today,” the newly minted state champion Adams said. “Ever since I came in freshman year, my goal has been to be as good as him. When I came in freshman year, I could barely keep up with him in our workouts. And slowly, I’ve just gotten closer and closer to now, we’re like training partners.
“This winter, we ran with each other every day, every easy run, every workout. We just pushed each other so much. We didn’t realize it, but pushing each other like that helped us get to be two of the best in the state, in the country.”
Anderson and Adams are, indeed, two of the top runners in the country in the 3200. Anderson, a senior who will run at Notre Dame next season, had previously logged the fifth-best time in the nation this year, while Adams, a sophomore, had the sixth fastest.
The Mountain Vista duo went to the front of the pack early at Friday’s CHSAA state track meet. They took turns leading and drafting off each other until it was time to race near the end. The rest of the pack offered a different challenger at a few points, but the Golden Eagles pair pulled away on the final lap, with Adams finishing first in 9 minutes, 7.93 seconds.
“I think the goal was for him to lead a couple laps, I was going to lead a couple laps and then see what happens,” Anderson said. “Then with like three laps to go, I was like, ‘All right dude, I’m really, really tired. I am not going to hold on to this.’ So I kind of waved him on, and he took it.
“I was like, ‘All right, it’s your time to shine, bro.’”
Anderson had good reason to feel like second place was an achievement. He and Adams finished 1-2 at the 5A boys cross country final in November, but he’s also been working his way through a breathing disorder that developed in the spring of his junior year.
The problem was diagnosed as vocal cord dysfunction. When Anderson would get his heart rate up in high-pressure situations, his throat would close instead of opening as he inhaled. It made him feel like he was suffocating.
That’s obviously a huge issue for any athlete, let alone an endurance runner.
“It was really, really tough,” Anderson said. “I had to go through a lot of breathing therapy and work through that to reopen my throat when I was breathing. They re-taught me how to breathe, which was really crazy.”
The 1-2 finish helped ease a bit of the pain from Thursday, when the duo were part of a 4×800-meter relay team that was favored to win but came up just short by one-tenth of a second to Northfield in a fantastic finish. Anderson and Adams were back on the track a few hours later for the individual 800 meters, where they placed fourth and seventh.
It was their third race in less than 27 hours.
“We had good motivation,” Anderson said. “Everyone at Mountain Vista, we’re so adamant about winning the team title. Ben and I, we’re exhausted. We’re so tired, but we just wanted to score as many points as we can to help our team.”
The winner in the 800 meters was ThunderRidge’s Ben Lee, who became a back-to-back state champion in the event. It was a comeback win for Lee, who set a personal best and claimed the top time in Colorado this season at 1:51.42, nearly a second ahead of Frederick’s Tanner Kaufmann.
That was by design.
“It was the strategy, just because of the conditions today,” Lee said. “It’s a little windy, so I was planning to definitely lag back, not get too far behind where I can’t catch up, but just be in a good spot where I can kind of draft off the wind and be ready to make my move.”
Lee, a junior, said he’s gotten pretty close with the Mountain Vista duo. The two schools are about three miles apart. They’ve all been racing against one another for the past two seasons, while Lee and Anderson have three years of competition together.
The last showdown between “The Bens” will be Saturday, when all three line up again in the final of the 1,600. It could be Anderson’s turn to chase Adams, who has the top 5A time in the event this year.
“It’s super cool, because our names are super close,” Anderson said. “We run about the same times. So it’s funny. Yeah, it’s awesome.”
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